CLASSIFICATION OF THE FOREST. 19 



for various grades of hardwood saw products, and furniture factories 

 are working up some lumber into the more common articles of 

 furniture. 



In spite of these heavy drafts upon it, the great body of hardwood 

 timber in east 'Texas remains to be harvested. What a resource is 

 furnished by these noble forests of high-grade, woods, suitable for 

 manufacturing into the more valuable products of the mill, the single 

 example already mentioned of 500 square miles along the Trinity 

 above Liberty may illustrate. But its day is at hand. Not only are 

 local factories being erected to work up the native hardwoods, but 

 Northern concerns also, having consumed the timber in their territory, 

 a re eagerly reaching out for new sources of supply. Hitherto Arkansas 

 has been the field of their southern operations; now they are beginning 

 to turn to the better Texas areas. Here is at hand sufficient raw 

 material to support for many years establishments for working up 

 the forests into furniture, wagon timbers, implement handles, and all 

 manner of things now shipped into the State from great distances. 



Yet the manufacturer can come none too soon for the utilization of 

 this great timber resource. So rich is the soil that clearing for settle- 

 ment is outstripping the lumberman. Field after field of unsurpassed 

 forest is being deadened and destroyed merely to get rid of the trees. 

 The best thing that can happen in the interest alike of the private 

 owner and the State is the rapid development of a market for this 

 timber, which otherwise is likely to be largely wasted, although cer- 

 tain to be salable at a large profit within a few } r ears, if the impa- 

 tience of the owners to realize an immediate value could be restrained. 



Along the streams the alluvial bottom timber extends into the 

 inland prairie region to a noteworthy degree, but with so marked 

 modifications that its discussion falls more appropriately under that of 

 the prairie region itself. 



LOBLOLLY TINE AND HARDWOOD FOREST OF THE INTERIOR OF THE 



COAST PLAIN. 



At the Gulf the Coast Plain is a treeless, grass-covered prairie. 

 Twenty miles inland tongues of forest are found, projecting down 

 toward the Gulf. All the way from the Sabine to the Brazos, in pass- 

 ing through the middle of the Coast Plain which extends from 50 to 

 100 miles into the interior one traverses alternately belts of open 

 prairie and tongues of heavy timber. These latter follow either the 

 streamways or the elevated ridges of porous, sandy soil which from 

 time to time break the continuity of the heavy prairie clays. Farther 

 inland the forest becomes almost continuous and very dense, extending 

 in this form over practically the interior half of the Coast Plain. 



The tongues of forests along the streams belong partly to the swamp 



